1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates generally to an apparatus and method for generating a stereo image and, more specifically, an interleaved stereo image.
2. Description of the Related Art
Because both eyes can observe the outside objects individually, human beings have stereovision, i.e., the left eye has a left-eye view and the right eye has a right-eye view. In addition, there is a viewing angle difference between both eyes. Then, a stereo image is formed in the brain through the brain's naturally fusing.
A 3D stereo display enables a view's left and right eyes to respectively observe a shrunken left-eye image and a shrunken right-eye image with a viewing angle difference between both eyes, and thus a viewer can see a stereo image. In order to achieve the objective, there is a method that alternatively displays a shrunken left-eye image and a shrunken right-eye image; meanwhile, a viewer wears LCD shutter glasses whose left and right spectacles alternatively allow the lights through with switching operations synchronized with the vertical retrace of the display. Therefore, the viewer can enjoy the sight of stereo images with a high frequency switching level.
Because displaying stereo images requires fast computational capability and large image storage space, many techniques in conventional technology have been developed for speeding up the data computation or reducing the memory space used for displaying stereo images. For example, interlace display technique displays the shrunken left-eye image on the odd lines of the display and displays the shrunken right-eye image on the even lines of the display. Consequently, the data volume of the shrunken left-eye and right-eye images is half reduced.
Referring to FIG. 1, a display 8 with a resolution 10×10 is exemplified. When the interlace display technique is employed, a video memory 1 stores a 10×5 shrunken left-eye image and a 10×5 shrunken right-eye image. A shrunken left-eye image 11 is displayed in lines 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9 of the display and lines 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10 are blank upon displaying the shrunken left-eye image. Similarly, a shrunken right-eye image 12 is displayed in lines 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10 of display image and lines 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9 are blank upon displaying the shrunken right-eye image. There are other implementing practices regarding the interlace display technique, such as line-blanking and sync-doubling, etc.
However, in conventional technologies, the shrunken left-eye and right-eye images need to be processed before displaying a 3D image with the interlace display technique. In order to speedily generate a real-time 3D stereo image, such as sequentially generating each frame of the 3D animation, the problem of slow reaction time causes frame flickering when the interlace display technique is implemented by the software. Therefore, how to increase the speed of the real-time processing of the interlace display technique is desirable to solve.